China’s Lenovo Group will lay off 10 per cent of white-collar staff after sales of Motorola handsets fell by a third, raising doubts over the personal computer giant’s bet that a money-losing brand it bought for nearly $3 billion will help it become a global smartphone leader. Shares in the world’s biggest maker of PCs slid nearly 9 per cent on Thursday after it said its quarterly […]
INTERNATIONAL. In the last quarter of 2014, in the face of possible oversupply, Saudi Arabia abandoned its traditional role as the global oil market’s swing producer and therefore it role as unofficial guarantor of existing ($100+ per barrel) prices. In October, Saudi sources first prepared the market with statements that the country would be comfortable with oil prices as low as $80 per barrel for “a year […]
NEW YORK/SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) unveiled a new Galaxy Note phablet and a larger version of its curved-screen S6 edge smartphone on Thursday, marking a fresh bid by the South Korean company to revive momentum in its handset business. Samsung is the world’s top smartphone maker but its market share fell in the second quarter when the company released its critically acclaimed S6 models, squeezed […]
A neon Google logo is seen as employees work at the new Google office in Toronto, November 13, 2012. Reuters/Mark Blinch/Files Ben Crawford was asleep 12,000 km (7,500 miles) from Google Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Mountain View, California headquarters this week when the Internet giant unveiled its new face. Crawford, chief executive of London-based CentralNIC Group Plc (CNIC.L), woke up in Sydney to learn that the domain powered by […]
INTERNATIONAL. Lifting sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program will have a significant impact on the world oil market, the Iranian economy and Iran’s trading partners. Iran’s full return to the global market will eventually add about a million barrels of oil a day, lowering oil prices by US$10 per barrel next year, according to the World Bank, which also expects economic growth in the country to surge […]
INDIA FACES MORE COMPETITION IN EXPORT MARKET By Anjan Roy China has shocked the world by suddenly devaluing its currency…
Chinese airlines and European luxury car makers are emerging as the early losers after the People’s Bank of China let the yuan fall the most in two decades. China’s surprising move to cut its daily reference rate by 1.9 percent Tuesday rippled through global markets. Policy makers called the change a one-time adjustment and said its fixing will become more aligned with supply and demand. While it […]
UAE. July’s survey data signalled another increase in overall business activity across Dubai’s private sector economy, which marked five-and-a-half years of continuous expansion. However, growth momentum moderated to its weakest recorded since March 2012 amid softer contributions from all three key sub-sectors monitored by the survey. Private sector companies operating in Dubai are nonetheless still highly upbeat about their business activity prospects for the year ahead, according […]
SEATTLE Teams of video gamers playing characters ranging from wizards to monsters exchanged virtual punches, fireballs and lightning strikes over the past six days, battling at the main event of the Dota 2 International 2015 tournament in Seattle. And by the end of Saturday’s finals, five players, including a 16-year-old, became more than a million dollars richer. Now in its fifth year and playing to a sold-out […]
Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology, gestures during a news conference in New Delhi, India, August 4, 2015. Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee MUMBAI Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a key supplier to Apple Inc (AAPL.O), on Saturday signed a pact with Maharashtra to invest $5 billion over five years on a new electronics manufacturing facility. The announcement was made by Foxconn founder […]
While excess capacity and price volatility are among the key challenges faced by the steel industry, digital is shaping the future of metals in a complex business environment, said the managing director of Accenture metals. John Lichtenstein shared his passion for steel and how the industry can address growth challenges in an interview published by Accenture, a multinational management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company. What are […]
Government overreach is the primary culprit that keeps the Internet from being the free and open source of information and ideas that it could be, according to a leading computer crime defense attorney. Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, addressed the subject of Internet freedom yesterday in her keynote address at the annual Black Hat computer security conference in […]
UAE. July data suggested that the UAE’s non-oil private sector regained some of the growth momentum that was lost at the end of the second quarter. Output and new orders both rose at sharper rates, contributing to a robust overall improvement in business conditions. Job creation was also sustained at a solid pace. On the price front, data highlighted divergent trends in July. The rate of cost […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector began the third quarter of 2015 on a positive note, with business conditions improving at the fastest pace in three months during July. Stronger growth of the sector as a whole was mainly driven by sharper expansions in both output and new orders, while purchasing activity also rose more quickly. However, data for employment bucked the general trend, as the […]
RAS LAFFAN, Qatar — The temperature hovered around 100 degrees on the jetty here, where a set of pipes were connected to a giant red-hulled ship. But the moisture in the air froze on the pipes and flaked off, creating snowlike flurries on the early summer evening. The incongruous sight is common on the Qatari ship, the Al Rekayyat, which carries a frigid fuel known as liquefied […]
|By Matein Khalid| Every global recession since the OPEC oil shocks of 1973-74 was triggered by a contraction in the $17 trillion US economic colossus. The failure of Lehman Brothers, the meltdown in US subprime mortgages, the impotence of the implicit “Fed/Uncle Sam” put, the ice age in the commercial paper and interbank money markets all tipped the US economy into recession in late 2008 and triggered […]
DOHA, Qatar — Persian Gulf monarchies issued a cautious endorsement on Monday of the accord Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated last month to constrain Iran’s nuclear program. “This was the best option among other options,” said Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council that Mr. Kerry attended. In a news conference with Mr. Kerry, Mr. Attiyah said […]
Gold’s tumble to the lowest since 2010 promises to prolong a mergers and acquisitions boom that’s seen transactions at a three-year high as weaker prices slash asset valuations. Deals valued at $9.6 billion were proposed or completed in the six months to June 30, up 7 percent on the previous half, as producers including OceanaGold Corp. agreed acquisitions, according to data complied by Bloomberg. They totaled $22.3 […]
Tech company Nvidia has just issued a voluntary recall of about 88,000 of its Shield eight-inch tablets. If you bought your Shield between July 2014 and July 2015, it seems you might need to worry about the tablet catching fire. The good news is Nvidia will replace the one in your hands absolutely free. “Nvidia has determined that the battery in these tablets can overheat, posing a […]
An employee works inside the office of U.S. online cab-hailing company Uber, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, April 24, 2015. Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee REUTERS – Uber Technologies Inc will invest $1 billion in India in the next nine months, as the online taxi-hailing company looks to expand its services in its biggest market outside the United States. Uber said it would use the additional investment to […]
The yield on bonds of Abu Dhabi has decreased four basis points since 22 July, the day the UAE announced the move to remove fuel subsidies, Bloomberg reported. While the average yield on developing-country debt has increased 13 basis points since the 22 July announcement of fuel-price deregulation, the yield on bonds of Abu Dhabi has declined four basis points. The yield on bonds of the neighboring […]
Gold fell, heading for its largest monthly decline in two years, as the Federal Reserve moved closer to boosting US interest rates for the first time since 2006. While Fed policy makers refrained from signaling the timing of a rate rise after a two-day meeting, they described job gains as solid amid an improving economy, according to a statement Wednesday. The market expects a move as early […]